cjblomqvist

In Sweden, there's a fundamental agreement between companies, the state and unions to not have raises follow inflation (as it becomes reinforcing and hurting the rack economy).

Now, there's always discussion (you can guess who's arguing what if inflation is high and low...), but overall it seems to work pretty good.

The EU is collecting CO2 taxes (indirectly by giving permits out). That's a good comparison. There're tolls in the making for imports.

In this particular case I'm quite sure it's not the case. Good arguments in the other comments (why not just log more if that's the case), but I also happen to know a little bit about the workings of Mullvad (I live in Gothenburg where they're from...)

Northern Europe, at least Scandinavia, is already at 90%+ non carbon electricity generation. (88-100%)

Central and Eastern Europe have it tougher.

Totally. Tech neutral state incentives is the way to go for sure, everybody has different environment and context to consider (same within Sweden). Southern Europe has very different opportunities (much better situation for solar for example).

Anyway, my comment was in response to the extreme comment (parent) about how all rich countries became rich using fossil fuels - implying that that's the more or less only way to transition from poor to rich. I think it's important to note that that's not necessarily the case. You don't need to destroy the environment to go from poor to rich, even though a lot of countries historically have done it that way (also noteworthy that they did it without knowing about the consequences for the environment).

Iceland (geothermal) and Sweden (hydro + nuclear) comes knocking.

I know at least Sweden has been a net exporter for a long time. It's a little bit complicated (that's what happens in a market economy). Anyhow, we/EU should continue to strive to end coal as an energy source for all countries, be since we can do much better.

Or, because coding is now not a bottleneck, it'll become increasingly important to ensure all your developers know what to do/achieve, and you'll need to put more effort into setting up structures, processes etc to do that. More collaboration (instead of lone wolf coder) may actually increase the need for good managers.

Far from all OSS projects are like this. Eg. https://www.viblo.se/talks/

Snapdragon Elite X Gen 2 laptops are coming out as we speak. Assuming you're not doing GPU heavy work (or gaming), that's what you should be looking at. They are equal to M4 performance. Personally I'd look at the new Asus machines from CES.

A good leader/manager will most likely leave the decision up to the team. A bad team will make the wrong decision and probably blame the leader/manager. The main problem here is the performance of the team - but maybe more importantly the lack of ownership of the team (blaming the boss).

A bad manager/boss pressuring the team to make the wrong decisions - yes, in that scenario the main problem is the boss.

Unfortunately, in my experience, there's often talk about one situation without the other (at least portrayed as the only one). Many times it feels like it's too divert blame and guilt, and to defend what is really the opposite situation. Really makes discussing this topic more toxic and a lot less valuable - much more interesting to discuss the nuances!

If that $7-8 billion is spent on Azure, then it's basically a way to invest in data center capacity while also getting a big piece of Open AI ownership at the same time.

Är the same time, MS revenues are looking real good, causing the stock price to go up. It's a win win win maybe win huge situation.

The majority of the employees, in particular top management, is Swedish.

2/9 on the board are Chinese (same as Swedes). The rest are westerners.

Volvo produces more cars in Sweden than Apple produces iPhones etc in the US.

But you are correct that ownership of the company is majority Chinese (Li Shufu/Geely specifically) and they can control a lot.

Apple's ownership is more muddy, since the largest owners are big institutional (US) owners - mostly representing owners from who knows where through big funds (including index funds). I think it's fair to say that Apple is owned very globally. In that sense it's not US controlled, but globally controlled.

I think Volvo is still very Swedish, including its products, but also heavily Chinese influenced (and trending up) due to market challenges.

There's probably still some value in associating a large multi national company to a specific country and attributing it certain things due to that, but with these big companies it's becoming less so and definitely more complex. But saying that Volvo is fully Chinese and not Swedish anymore? That seems like fooling oneself.

Consulting is one thing, but in the startup ecosystem I'm in I have (during the last 15 years) never ever seen a startup having a too narrow target segment (and I know several investors with the same mindset).

It's definitely not super uncommon where I'm at. CTOs, especially those that founded companies and are more technical doers than managers, that end up having responsibility for architecture and technical matters (tech lead deluxe), but no people (due to lack of people management and leadership skills/or desire for that kind of job - sometimes also product management skills at larger organizations).

Many do. For most it's not the biggest concern (that would be quite weird). AFAIK it's mostly about reducing risk (avoiding complete garbage/duck taped setups)

Source: I know a person who does tech DD for investors, and I've also been asked this question in DD processes.

Pragmatism rules here, but yeah - the common way to do this (at least if you have keys generatable by the client), eg. using REST, is to not allow POSTs, but only PUT. Most APIs I've seen use PUT solely for updates (of existing items), but as is obvious from the wording it's not the original intention.

My neighbour designs the crumble zone on Volvo's heavy duty trucks. They at least spend a shit ton of effort (continuous, multi-decade) on making anything hit by the truck having as little effect as possible (at least).

Quite a challenge with heavy duty trucks shipping tens of tons of stuff, but anyway.

I have seen many backend developers with this mindset and approach, and; 1) Tricky parts of frontend are afaict equally tricky as building a DB/kernel/whatever. 2) A typical mistake is that a lack of knowledge about the hard parts of frontend makes backend'ers assume frontend is easy, while in reality it's their ignorance (and arrogance) rather than the subject being the issue 3) As with backend, most developers don't deal with the harder parts. Most backend developers I've talked to do simple CRUDing + minor business logic from a DB. Similarly very few developers try to write their own drag and drop library from scratch.

It's sad that so many seems to fall into the trap of 2).

(I've done both types of development for 20+ years)

Well, at the core of accounting there is an accountant reviewing your accounts (annually at least) - regardless how your books are done (with exceptions for small/tiny companies). So it doesn't seem so far off to do the base work done by an AI.

I guess it's like automated driving a few years back - monitored by humans able to take over control. Step by step it'll become better and better until good enough for handle certain chosen areas.

Please please no vibe accounting.

Funny you mention; There are multiple companies in Sweden working on AI/ML based accounting. It's not so different from AI/ML based automated driving.

That goes both ways. As with math, it's sometimes not wise to look at the answer as soon as you stumble upon something you can't solve immediately - sometimes it's good to force the person learning to think deeper and try to understand the problem more thoroughly. It's also a skill of it's own to be able to cope with such situations and not just bail/give up/do something else.

I fear this will be more and more of a problem with the TikTok/instant gratification/attention is only good for less than 10 seconds -generation. Deep thinking has great value in many situations.

"Funnily" enough, I see management more and more reward this behavior. Speed is treated as vastly more important than driving in the right direction, long-term thinking. Quarterly reports, etc etc.

I'm curious, since it's a YC/VC company - what's the business plan/model/vision? I assume it's not selling robot arms for $219? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Quick comment regarding the "Swedish fashion wonder": It's definitely a pyramid, but I can for sure name a bunch that definitely makes more than most H&M stores. And they keep popping up, and are definitely not irrelevant.

According to ChatGPT avg revenue of H&M stores in Sweden is 5.4 MEUR. If I remember correctly from my market research (I co-founded a Swedish SaaS targeting fashion brands) there at least 100 with more revenue then that - and they're definitely making most revenue outside of Sweden. To name a few; Djerf Avenue, Filippa K, Stronger, ICIW, Peak Performance, CHIMI eyewear, Tiger of Sweden, J Lindeberg... Heck, I can even name drop a bunch doing footwear more or less only; Axel Arigato, Icebug, Björn Borg, Eytys...

But yeah, most brands are doing less. It's a pyramid. But no, Swedish fashion brands (excl H&M) are definitely not irrelevant.

According to the article: Its latest refrigerant cooling system helps deliver a 35 percent gain in high-temperature lifespan, ensuring that megawatt charging won’t degrade the battery.

The UK (empire) didn't go down in a big war (although they fought in several, that also threatened them). It seems wars are definitely not needed for the transition to a nation rather then empire.

I'd say wars have historically been a part of all nations/geographical areas more or less continuously - and empires are more inclined to participate due to 1) being bigger and 2) thinking there's more to gain from those wars (usually due to capability/likelihood of winning).

I believe it's fine now because there's been another, better, solution that doesn't rely on spending so many $$$ on it; the EU. USA is probably not at all as worried about Germany as a country going crazy again.

Ironically, Hitler wanted to establish a third Reich - basically a new Roman empire that spanned all of... Europe. Funny how these things goes. Old wine in new bottles.

For anyone who don't know what IOI and IMO refers to;

IOI refers to the International Olympiad in Informatics, a prestigious annual computer science competition for high school students, while IMO refers to the International Mathematical Olympiad, which is a world-renowned mathematics competition for pre-college students.

(Ironically, provided by ChatGPT)

I guess your point is that it's obvious, but I'd argue it's not.

A lot of people are hyping up LLMs as the solution to all our problems, and there have been a lot of discussion around what's reasonable use cases (and a lot of anecdotal evidence trying to argue and support certain stances). My point is that we need (scientific) proof to move forward, and create confidence in "facts" we base our decisions on. Obviously that doesn't seem to be very fashionable nowadays - on both sides of the LLM discussion there seems to be a lot of people arguing hard for there stances. I'm very glad some are working on providing some facts into this discussion.

(one can argue about science vs truth, but regardless it's a step in the right direction/a good motive)

(this is btw why a solid educational foundation, not only skill focused, is very critical for society. cf democracy)

My only hangup is that I have had my confidence shaken by Microsoft's occasional showing of hand...

I think a really good strategy is to try to see if your goals align here. That's where C#/MS shines compared to many other languages supported by companies. Their interest is in you using C#, because they know that drives Azure adoption (well-known main reason why they're spending money on .NET). MS as a company also has a very long term strategic interest in selling stuff where it's awesome to have a ton of developers in their environment. It's been like that forever. Say what you want about Balmer, but he was very clear on this "developers, developers, developers". It's in their core DNA. A lot of their main product lines excel due to the mass of developers around them; Office (eg SharePoint and integrations), Business Central/ERP (integrations, plugins), Windows (ecosystem of software), Azure (including tooling such as Visual Studio, VSC). Gaming/Search/Live I'm less sure about, but at least for gaming C# probably helps.